Scalia’s Death Throws North Carolina’s Upcoming Election Into Confusion

North Carolina judges are deciding the fate of a law that allows state transportation officials to reserve a possible route for a future highway and forbid property owners from improving their land for decades.

As CityLab reported last week, a federal court ruled on February 5 that North Carolina illegally used race as the predominant factor for redrawing its congressional districts in 2011.

Lawmakers are going over new maps developed by a congressional redistricting committee. Attorneys for the state have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a lower court ruling that struck down two of the current districts and prohibits U.S. House elections under the map approved in 2011. That’s the current split in the state’s congressional delegation, and GOP lawmakers say they want to keep it that way.

“I am extremely disappointed by the recent ruling but still hope that Chief Justice Roberts will issue a stay that is in the best interest of the people of North Carolina”, McCrory said in a statement. “Worst-case scenario, it would put voters off from participating in any election”.

A Republican-led special redistricting committee voted to draw maps using political party information from elections since 2008 – but not voters’ race. With that vote, SCOTUS made it clear that racial gerrymandering is a critical problem that it would like to have ameliorated sooner rather than later.

Mary Hodgin lives in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. How a post-ScaliaSCOTUS will vote on this is something that has stumped election-law experts, including the University of California-Irvine professor Richard Hasen. Democrats, who hold the minority, tried unsuccessfully to vote down most of the criteria. Portions of south and southeast Mecklenburg County would be left outside the newly-configured 12th district.

Tom Byers of Asheville urged the General Assembly to adopt the same sort of nonpartisan process used in many other states.

The state was advised not to move its primary date up so early for a number of reasons, in large part because there are so many unsettled election changes occurring. These are the 1st District in northeast North Carolina and the 12th District that runs in a serpentine shape between Charlotte and Greensboro in central North Carolina. If the maps are changed and the election delayed, thousands of people who have already submitted absentee ballots could be disenfranchised.

The three judges said there was no evidence presented to them of racially polarized voting in the 1st District, which covers all or parts of 24 counties from Durham to Elizabeth City and New Bern, to justify its majority black status.

According to the complaint, first issued in 2013, plaintiffs David Harris, Christine Bowser and Samuel Love accuse the legislature of packing African-American voters into the two districts in a way which diminishes their voting power in surrounding districts. Harnett also praised the committee for “taking steps to protect the Legislature’s Constitutional role in drawing the districts while we wait for word from the U.S. Supreme Court”. “Does that push the primary back?” she said. But they were drowned out by others who blamed either the federal judges or Republican mapmakers for leading the state to the edge of electoral chaos four weeks before the primary.